Case Number 06265: Small Claims Court

CYBERTEAM IN AKIHABARA: CYBER GE (VOLUME 1)

The Charge

This isn't child's play!

The Case

This anime gets off to a very rocky start by assuming that I am (a)
interested in what is going on, and (b) aware of what is going on. This
latter point deserves some further explanation. The story opens on Hibari
Hanakoganei, who is just starting junior high. She and her two best friends will
all get the latest craze in toys, a "Pata-pi," and it will change
their lives. Pata-pi are cute, they're semi-alive (but partially mechanical),
they walk and talk, and occasionally they transform into adult-sized versions of
their owners and fight the forces of evil in special battle gear that
materializes from thin air!

No, really.

Oh, did I mention the dirty old weirdo who keeps peeking at the panties of
the girls even as he delivers cryptic messages about a phantom prince that wants
to meet Hibari? Or the psychotically pumped-up nemesis that Hibari fondly calls
"cow tits"? Or Shadow Master, the creepy man-child who watches over
everything and somehow enslaves the hearts of adult women with jobs and lives
and makes them do his evil bidding? Or the bizarre principal of the junior high
school these girls attend, who seems to have some master plan that he's trying
to hatch? Or the mysterious idol singer Hatoko, who appears for a brief number
at the beginning of each episode for seemingly no reason?

Yes, someone has been taking in too much caffeine, then staying up all night
before writing the script. A little bit of everything went into this series -- a
dash of Pokemon (cute creatures that can be trained to fight), a bit of
Wedding Peach (three girls who discover they are special transforming
warriors in a conflict they know nothing about), and just a pinch of Saint
Seiya (an enormous cast of characters on either side of a good-versus-evil
battle), and it's just as incoherent as you might expect.

The good news is that things do start to get interesting, but only when the
three girls finally get together and form the Cyber Team in Akihabara squad and
immediately start in-fighting and stressing out about the people who are
constantly trying to kill them. Watching their hysterics is funny. Other than
that, the shadowy organization behind the repeated attacks and the mysterious
prince that appears to Hibari only in her dreams and visions are just too vague
to hold the viewer's interest for long. In short, these episodes will pass the
time, but there are probably better ways to spend an afternoon.

Image quality for Cyber Team in Akihabara is not up to the normal
standard of a recently released series. The image is grainy and has a surprising
density of spots, fuzz, and other image gunkiness. The colors are slightly
washed out and, thanks to the animators' fondness for backlit and soft-focus
scenes, all of this combines to make your eyes water during certain scenes, as
white colors come out over-bright and other colors fade together. The sound
quality fares better, with a strong, mostly front-channel, 5.1 English language
mix and a 2.0 Japanese mix that sounds clear and unblemished. Extras feature
black-and-white production sketches set to series music and clean opening and
closing sequences. The sketches are mostly of the Divas (the transformed state
of the Pata-pi), although there are some concept sketches for the other
creatures, as well, including a few that aren't seen in these first five
episodes.

This series does come with a "mature themes" warning on the box,
and there is a little tomfoolery there, mostly in the form of looking at
little-girl panties, absurdly large chests, and a possible lesbian orientation
for one of the main characters. Any rumors of father-daughter lechery are to be
ignored, however. There is one scene where Hibari is in the bath, and her father
absentmindedly says he will join her soon, and she freaks out, but this is there
mostly to show that she is a grown-up who can no longer bathe with her father
because she is too old. In Japan, it's common for fathers to have a soak with
their small girls, so this scene indicates that she has grown up right under his
nose and he is just now taking notice.

I wish I could recommend this series, but I really can't; it just doesn't
wow me or stand out in any way. The verdict: released on parole -- I want to see
how things develop in future volumes before deciding if this is worth my time to
follow.